Archive for the ‘afro-americanos’ Category

In the past week, there have been a series of events that continue to prove the racial problem that exists in the United States. The election of Barack Obama has led many to believe that we are now living in a “post-racial” society. People who believe this to be true have apparently ignored all of the blatant displays of racial animosity, hatred and insensitivity. Last week, a man with connections to Neo-Nazi groups killed an African-American man in a museum dedicated to the Jewish Holocaust. Since then, we have seen Republican party activist Rusty DePass refer to a gorilla as one of First Lady Michelle Obama’s ancestors. We have also seen a racist e-mail sent by Sherri Goforth, a legislative aid for Republican senator Diane Black. The photo in the e-mail presented photos of all of the 44 American presidents. The photo in the 44th place that represented Obama was simply a picture of two eyes with a black background.

Throughout the presidential campaign and now during the Obama presidency, racist or derogatory jokes and depictions of the Obamas have been widespread. These jokes tell us a lot about the perceptions, true or false, that people seem to have. One, it is obvious that many people remain uncomfortable with seeing a black family in the White House. Two, for people who continue to question why Barack Obama should be considered black rather than biracial, these sentiments prove a point that I continue to make: it is the African ancestry of Barack Obama that is at the root of such racist comments and jokes. Regardless of his European ancestry, racist jokes and comments prove that Americans see Obama as a black man. And three, the existence of a small number of assumed white supremacists gives people the perception that white supremacy is no longer a serious problem.

The third point is perhaps the most important in countries that see themselves as lands of “equal opportunity” or “racial democracies”. Nowadays, openly racist white supremacists groups are an extreme minority in the United States. This does not mean that racism isn’t still a powerful force in society. When white supremacists share their racist beliefs or commit racially motivated hate crimes, it allows people who do not openly share racist views to hide and convince themselves that they are not racists. White supremacy is simply a belief that persons of primarily European ancestry and/or appearance are better than non-European people. By this definition, there are millions of people who are white supremacists although they may never admit it. The racist opinions of these types of people are only exposed at certain moments or with people in their social circle.

At this point, Republican activist Rusty DePass hasn’t been connected to any white supremacy groups, but after comparing Michelle Obama to a gorilla, his sentiments are obvious. In 1992, Afro-Brazilian politician Benedita da Silva ran for mayor of the city of Rio de Janeiro. Opponents made monkey gestures and said that she would plant a banana tree in the mayor’s mansion (Palácio). In 2002, da Silva became governor of the state of Rio de Janeiro after Anthony Garotinho decided to run for the presidency. When da Silva completed his term and Garotinho’s wife became governor, he said that he would disinfect the Guanabara Palace (state government headquarters of Rio) before his wife moved in. A common insult against Afro-Brazilians are the words “negro fedorento”, or “stinking black”. Garotinho also has no acknowledged connection with any of Brazil’s white supremacist or death squad groups.

Anthony Garotinho, Benedita da Silva

The point is, a person doesn’t have to belong to a racist group and openly declare white supremacy in order to be a white supremacist. In America of today, as has been the case in Brazil for many years, very few want to be considered a racist or a white supremacist. But in their minds, white people are the most beautiful and intelligent people on the planet. Their racist sentiments may occasionally appear publicly, but often times, don’t appear at all, at least publicly. In this sense, racists and white supremacy are somewhat like the air: it exists, and we are surrounded by it, but sometimes we don’t notice until the wind blows.

It’s interesting to note how people perceive race relations in the United States and in Brazil. In general, America has an image of a country of racial hatred and animosity. On the other hand, people perceive Brazil to be a place free of racism, discrimination and hatred. But when history and statistics are considered, it is difficult to understand why this perception exists. Although it is true that America does have a history of racial animosity and hatred, relations in Brazil are not always as cordial one would believe. When people think of countries that preach white supremacy, they usually imagine places like Nazi era Germany, Jim Crow America and Apartheid era South Africa. But if social inequality, inaccurate mediarepresentation and mistreatment of one group toward another are considered essential factors of white supremacy, Brazil also belongs in this category.

Because of world history, documentaries and news reports, many people are familiar with atrocities committed by the Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan, but it appears that few people know the history of death squads and the military police in Brazil. It might be surprising to know, but it is much more dangerous to be a citizen of Brazil than to be a citizen of the United States. A few statistics will prove my point.

In 2003, police in Rio de Janeiro killed 4 times more people than police in the entire United States.

In 2003, police in Rio killed 1,195 people. By comparison, police in the entire United States killed 1,080 people within a three year period (2002-2004)

In 2003, police in São Paulo killed 868 people. In 1992, São Paulo police killed 61 times more people than New York City police killed in that same year (15 times more per capita)

In 2003, police in three Brazilian states (São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais) killed nearly 5 times more people than American police killed in the entire United States (1749 and 370 respectively)

Between 1990 and 2001, São Paulo police killed 7,942 people. Between those same years, police in the entire United States killed 4,558 people. To put these numbers in perspective, the combined total police murders in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo in one year (2003) was 2,063. That is two-thirds the total number of US casualties (2,947) in nearly a three year period (March 2003 to December 2006) in the war in Iraq.

In 2004, in the northeastern Brazilian state of Bahia, 699 of the 706 deaths of people between the ages of 15 and 29 were Afro-Brazilian. In comparison, in another period of high murder rates, in a three year period (1987-1990) in the city of Chicago, 708 African-American men between the ages of 14 and 29 were killed.

In 2007, 426 African-American youth between the ages of 14 and 17 were killed in the entire United States. Between the years 2008 and 2009, more than 3,000 people were killed in the northeastern city of Recife. The population of Recife (in the state of Pernambuco) is 1.5 million. In comparison, the combined number of homicides in the states of New York and California in 2005 was approximately 3,400. The combined population of California and New York in 2005 was approximately 55 million.

In the Brazilian capital city of Brasilia in 2004, a black youth was 5 times more likely to be killed than a white youth. This is equal to a 2007 report about blacks in the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The differences between the murders of African-Americans and Afro-Brazilians is that the vast majority of the murders of black men in Brazil appear to be committed by police and death squads, many of which are former or off duty police. In the United States, approximately 94% of murders of black men are committed by other black men. Because of these numbers, one writer described black killers of other black men the “Black KKK.” It should also be acknowledged that a large percentage of police in Brazil are Afro-Brazilian. The bottom line here is that whether the murders are committed by police, death squads or black men, having brown skin in either country can be dangerous.

Well, it happened again. Another black man was killed because of perception and prejudgement. New York police-officer Omar J. Edwards was killed after he chased another man who he saw break into his car. After a brief struggle, the thief escaped from Edwards and began to run. Edwards pulled out his gun and pursued the man. Another policeman, riding in a car with other policemen, saw Edwards and fired six shots, killing Edwards. Edwards was not dressed in his police uniform when he was killed. The officer who killed Edwards was white. Edward’s death is another in a series of murders of black men, including those of Sean Bell in New York and Oscar Grant in Oakland, California.

The November 25th (2006) murder of Sean Bell by the New York Police Department was just another incident in a long line of injustices experienced by the black community in cases involving the police. Bell was to be married only hours after he was killed in a hail of 50 bullets fired at him by police officers who believed he and his two friends were armed. The weapons they were supposedly carrying were never found by the police. Bell’s friends Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield were also wounded during the assault. This case reminds many of the violent murder of Amadou Diallo, the West African immigrant who was killed after being shot at 41 times by the NYPD in 1999. The police officers in that case were all acquitted.

In a country where blacks and whites have had a very strenuous history and black men are consistently victims of police abuse and homicide, race is again a factor in how this case will be judged. In this particular situation, I cannot say with any certainty that the officer that shot and killed Edwards was absolutely wrong. Without having seen the incident from the beginning, how would any police officer react in that scenario? Two men running, one man chasing the other with a gun. What would anyone think?

I would like to say that race had nothing to do with this particular scenario but I can’t be absolutely sure. The question is, if the two men running were both white, how would the officer who killed Edwards have reacted? Is there a possibility that he would not have immediately decided to fire shots? Raqiyah Mays, host of a radio station in New York notes the difference of perception when two men, one black and the other white, are doing the same thing. “How many times have you seen a black man running down the street and thought something negative? As opposed to seeing a white guy running down the street and you think he’s running late?”

This is also true in Brazil where there is a popular saying about this exact situation: “A white man running is an athlete, a black man running is a thief” (“Branco correndo é atleta preto correndo é ladrão”).

Research has shown that whites tend to react different in scenarios when someone is black than when someone is white. And although I cannot immediately label this a racist incident, there is still a necessity of accessing the image of black men and women in the imagination of any society in which blacks and whites live together.

Although Western societies continue to deny it, non-whites, particularly blacks, are still viewed as “the other”. A threat. Different. Dangerous. The legendary Frantz Fanon captured this sentiment perfectly. While studying psychiatry in Lyons, France, one day a white child noticed Fanon and said, “Look mommy, a negro! I’m scared!” This fear of the black man has humiliated millions of innocent people throughout the world. The Western world depiction of blacks has been the cause of humiliation, disrespect and even death for millions of African descendants throughout the world. It’s sad, but the death of Edwards because of a misperception is nothing new. And while the violent police murders of African-American men always seems to be in the news, the police assassinations of Afro-Brazilian men is a silent genocide that the international press has seemingly ignored.

Between the years 1995 and 1998, 517 African-Americans were killed by the entire American police department. That represents 35% of the 1,478 justifiable homicides committed by the police. African-Americans represent 13% of the US population. After evaluating more than 1,000 homicides committed by police in one city, Rio de Janeiro, between the years 1993 and 1996, reports show that 70% of victims were Afro-Brazilians. In 1999, 85% of victims of murders committed by police or the death squads in Brazil were Afro-Brazilians. At the time, Afro-Brazilians represented 45% of the population.

In an example of the cruelty and disregard for black life in Brazil, in June of 2008, the bodies of three black men, Wellington Gonzaga da Costa, Marcos Paulo Correia and David Wilson Florêncio were found in the trash in Rio de Janeiro. The police had stopped and frisked the men who were suspected of being drug dealers and carrying weapons. The search only produced one cell phone. 46 shots were fired at the men, the majority of them in the head. Da Silva’s arm had been cut off and Ferreira’s hands had been tied together before he was executed. The execution of young black men is very common in Brazil.

After evaluating more than 1,000 police homicides committed by police in one city, Rio de Janeiro, between the years 1993 and 1996, reports show that 70% of the murder victims were Afro-Brazilian. By the year 1999, 85% of the victims of murders committed by the police or death squads in Brazil were Afro-Brazilian. At the time, Afro-Brazilians represented about 45% of the Brazilian population. Although many Brazilians automatically accuse the United States of being the true racist country, elites in Brazil have always dreamt of Brazil being accepted as a white country, which can only happen through the elimination of the huge Afro-Brazilian population. The murders of Omar J. Edwards, Sean Bell, Oscar Grant, Wellington Gonzaga da Costa, Marcos Paulo Correia and David Wilson Florêncio demonstrates yet another thing that Brazil and America have in common: a disregard for black life.

*This is the title of a book by Afro-Brazilian author, Ana Flauzina, about the genocide against the Afro-Brazilian population perpetuated by the Brazilian state.

In 2006, various writers began exposing a little secret that African-American men had keeping: sexual tourism in Brazil. Millions of black American men had been “introduced” to Brazilian women through the music videos of rappers like Snoop Dogg and Ja Rule. Rapper TI mentioned Brazilian women in the lyrics of his song, “Let’s Get Away”. In 2003, Hip Hop producer Pharrell Williams released a documentary about his search for the sexiest Brazilian model in Rio de Janeiro. Adult film production companies were recording many of their films in various cities throughout Brazil, particularly in Rio de Janeiro. Professors like William Jelani Cobb of Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, and Tracy Denean Sharpley-Whiting of Vanderbilt University focused part of their work on the phenomenon of African-American men and sexual tourism in Brazil. And in 2008, social worker Jewel Woods and journalist Karen Hunter, released the most complete analysis of the new trend in their book, Don’t Blame It On Rio: The Real Deal Behind Why Men Go to Brazil for Sex.

Online forums and comment sections on websites and blogs were filled with thousands of comments by African-Americans, men and women, who were eager to share their opinions on the subject. African-American women were disgusted. Many African-American men expressed their desire to go to Brazil and experience an apparent sexual paradise for black men. The question of why so many African-American men were going to Brazil for sexual escapades was asked on hundreds on websites and blogs.

According to the work of Cobb, Sharpley-Whiting, Woods and Hunter, there were several reasons for the sudden fascination with Brazil. Some reasons include: the “pornification” of hip hop, the obesity rates of African-American women, the confrontational attitudes of African-American women, and the abundance of mixed race women, with long, curly hair and curvaceous bodies. In Brazil, women appear to be the exact opposite. There are far fewer obese Brazilian women than in America. The Brazilian women that these men meet are beautiful, non- confrontational and offer affection and memorable sexual experiences (for a price) that these men don’t think they receive in America. And with the value of the American dollar normally worth two to three Brazilian reais, these men spend much less in Brazil in comparison to what they would pay for similar “services” in America.

Besides the apparent conflict at the root of many relationships between African-American men and women, another aspect of this of this fascination with Brazilian women, is the self-hatred that has been a part of the African-American experience since the slavery era. As is true of Afro-Brazilians and other blacks in the African Diaspora, African-Americans have been psychologically trained to hate blackness. On the surface, African-Americans claim to be “black and proud”, but in reality, we, as a group, have never been able to heal from the wounds of self-hatred. African-American men have consistently proven that they prefer women of lighter skin, long (less nappy) hair and less prominently African facial features. In regards to Brazil, let me say, there are millions of Afro-Brazilian women that have the same physical appearances as African-American women. If many of these women appeared on the streets of any black community in America, no one would know that they were Afro-Brazilian until they spoke.

Afro-Brazilian women

Mulheres afro-brasileiras

Afro-Brazilian women

Mulheres afro-brasileira

Vanessa Williams, Halle Berry

But it is not average African-American woman that these men are pursuing. The African-American man in Brazil is searching for the mulata and mestiça type that they see in popular hip hop music videos. In American terms, they are searching for the Beyonce, Ciara, Jennifer Lopez, Alicia Keys type of women, and in Brazil, this physical type is plentiful. Although there are millions of Brazilian women that are clearly black, there are also millions that are indefinable racially. I’m not speaking of women like Halle Berry, or even Vanessa Williams, women who have light or tanned skin yet still prominent African features, I’m speaking of the Gloria Velez type that is not black enough or white enough to be labeled as one or the other. Brazilian model Viviane Araújo is a good example of this type of woman. What does this say about black pride?

The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) recently released another study of the diversity or lack of diversity in the American television industry. In the fourth installment of the report entitled “Out of Focus, Out of Sync, Take 4“, the organization reported a “virtual disapperance” of television programs aimed at the African-American community since minor television networks WB and UPN merged to form the CW network. Only one major television network (CBS) features a cast led by African-Americans. The report also found an 8% decrease of minority actors featured on prime-time programs between 2002 and 2007 and a 17% decrease of minority writers from the previous season. Minorities studied included African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians and Native Americans. The situation in Brazil is even worse. According to study entitled “Where is the black on public TV?”, 88.6% of television hosts and 93.3% of journalists are white. Another statistic showed that 82% of all Brazilian television programming featured nothing about race or approached Afro-Brazilian themes. Afro-Brazilians represent half of Brazil’s 190 million citizens.

In many ways, the struggle for black representation on televison in the two countries represent the different stages of the struggle for equality for African descendants in the two countries. On the four major American television networks, African-Americans, who represent 13% of the American population, actually achieve or slightly surpass their population proportions on television but are severely underrepresented as writers, producers and directors of television programming. After the gains of the Civil Rights Movement in the past 50 years that presented more opportunity for African-American actors in front of the camera, African-Americans now struggle for control of how they are portrayed in front of the camera from behind the camera where opportunities for black writers, producers and directors are rare. For example, in the 2005-2006 television season, black writers represented only 5.2% of all writers employed.

For Afro-Brazilians, where some estimate the victories of the Black Movement to be 20-40 years behind the struggle in America, the immediate challenge is still securing roles for darker faces on Brazilian television screens. Some people continue to ask why it is still necessary to discuss the issue of the lack of diversity in front of and behind the television camera. The answer remains the same. The mental and emotional stability and well-being of both these populations after having endured hundreds years of slavery and post-abolition racism, exclusion and white supremacy has still yet to be fully addressed in either country. A number of authors have written about the sickness of self-hatred perpetuated by a system of white supremacy that has been disasterous for the self-esteem of millions of African descendants throughout the Diaspora. Within the psyche of many blacks, there remains a rejection of blackness and a lack of self-love that manifests in the high rates of black-on-black violence, the desire (acknowledged or denied) to be white or produce white or lighter-skinned offspring and the overall adoration of whiteness. The invisibility of blacks on television and or their negative representation when they are presented, represents at best the opinion of the dominant society that blacks are inferior or at worst, they should disappear.

The power of television and the overall media resides in the acceptance of this thesis by the excluded population that has yet to address the psychological horrors and wounds that have been inflicted over the duration of its existence.

In the African Diaspora, blackness by definition also includes Mestizaje or Mestiçagem, the Spanish and Portuguese words meaning racial mixture. In other words, because of the history of racial mixture in the Americas, most persons of African descent in the Americas also have Native American and/or European ancestry in their family trees. We I say the Americas, I refer to all countries from Canada to Argentina and all of the islands in the Caribbean. Discussing the idea of blackness and mestiçagem is a sure way to start a debate or argument depending on the perspective of the persons involved in the debate. Anthroplogists have for many years written that the idea of race, racial classification and racial identity are atextreme opposites when one compares the United States with Brazil and the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean.

During the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, persons of African ancestry were encouraged to define themselves as blacks even if non-African ancestry was a part of their genetic history. In this way, persons of African descent empowered themselves by claiming a black identity in a society that denigrated blackness. On the other hand, although there have existed various black social and cultural movements in Brazil, there has never existed a mass, national civil rights movement in which persons of African descent idetified themselves as blacks. Thus, in some ways, if compared with the United States, black identity in Brazil today could be compared with two eras in United States history: pre-Civil Rights and post-Civil Rights. In other words, as in the United States before and after the Civil Rights Movement, there are people who have accepted a black identity and others who avoid blackness at all costs even when their African ancestry is obvious.

This rejection of a black identity was common in the United States and Brazil. The comedian Richard Pryor captured this denial of blackness perfectly on one his albums. Imitating the typical response of the black American in the 1950s, Pryor exclaimed, “Black? Don’t call me black, I’m a negro!!”

The legendary Malcolm X also acknowledged this denial of blackness amongst many black Americans. In one of his famous speeches, Malcolm X affirmed:

“Very few of our people really look upon themselves as being black. The think of themselves as practically everything else on the color spectrum except black. And no matter how dark one of our people may be, you rarely hear him call himself black.”

It is important to understand that during the 1950s and 1960s in the United States, African-Americans began to reject the term negro in favor of the term black. In Brazil today, Afro-Brazilian militants encourage persons of visible African ancestry to reject terms like moreno, preto and mulatto in favor of the term negro.

These ideals have created conflict, exclusion and adherence to group allegiance. Although studies seem to prove that race inthe United States and Brazil are completely different, I would argue that the two systems of racial classification are notas different as they appear. For instance, it is well known that Brazilians use many terms to identify a person according tohis or her phenotype (moreno, mulatto, sarara, for example). But this is also true of African-Americans (chocolate, caramel,high yellow, blue-black, etc.) Studies have also shown that, as in Brazil, African-Americans that look less African have acertain degree of advantages over others with darker skin or more African features (nose, hair, lips, etc.).

In Brazilian terms, one of these groups would be defined as black and the other, brown. In the past few years, Well-known Brazilian social scientists and journalists have intensified their arguments that these groups should be treated as two totally separate, distinct groups although socioeconomic studies prove that these groups experience discrimination in similar ways. In Brazil today, there is a dispute about racial classification between one side that believes Brazil is a mixed race nation that is not and should not be divided into a bipolar nation as exists in the United States. On the other side, there are black militants who insist that the country is already divided into white and non-white. Which side is right and what is the difference in comparison with the United States?

The exchange between Afro-Brazilians and African-Americans has taken another step in the past month. In September, José Vicente, president of the only black university in Brazil and Latin America, Unipalmares, began a tour of the United States. On his trip, Vicente visited Howard University in Washington DC, one of the oldest black universities in the United States. Vicente also participated in the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, a yearly meeting thatattracted more than 5,000 people from around the world. The discussion of the Caucus of this year was the importance to the black world of Democratic candidate Barack Obama being elected president of the United States.

Before his trip, the NGO, Afrobras, started a campaign intitled, “Obama we are together” that collected signatures as gestures of support for the senator from Illinois. The campaign sought to collect more 18,000 signatures for the candidate that would become the first black president of the United States. Afrobras is an NGO dedicated to increasing the access of Afro-Brazilians to Brazilian universities. In 2002, Afrobras created Unipalmares, a private university that reserves 50% of its vacancies to Afro-Brazilian students. Today, 87% of the students at Unipalmares are Afro-Brazilian. The complete name of the university is the University of Zumbi of Palmares Citizenship. The university is named after the revolutionary 17th century black leader of the greatest maroon society in the history of Brazil.

Look at these photos very carefully. At first glance, you may think that you are looking at two photos of the 2006 film, Dreamgirls. In reality, one of the photos was taken from the actual film while the other is an imitation. On the left are American actresses Jennifer Hudson, Beyoncé Knowles and Anika Noni Rose in the film. On the right, is a photo that appeared in the Brazilian magazine Quem, featuringthree Brazilian women in the same roles. From left to right are actresses Lucy Ramos, Ildi Silva and singer Preta Gil. Before there is any confusion or misunderstanding, there was not an actual Brazilian version of the film.

A few months ago, I had an interesting online conversation with a black American woman who runs an online blog about black women and interracial dating. Without going into the details, she became belligerent when I referred to certain black female American entertainers as “mulattas”. “How dare you call these women ‘mulattos’! They some straight up sistas!”, she wrote. This is very typical of the black American response to racial classification after centuries of racism, segregation and the infamous “one-drop rule” that categorizes as black anyone with any known African ancestry. On the other hand, after many years of racism, exclusion and miscegenation, many Brazilians will tell you in a minute that a “parda”, “mulatta” or “morena”, all terms that could be applied to persons of African descent, is not black. Two totally different systems of racial classfication, right?

Not necessarily.

At the root of both systems of racial classification is the force of white supremacy that associates power, money and beauty with whiteness while blackness is associated with the poverty, ugliness and second-class citizenship. In reality, the only thing that differentiates the two systems of racial classification is description. In Brazil, the term “preto” means black. Some people use the term to describe a person of African descent whose skin is the color of coal or the actual color black. For others, it describes a person who has very little detectable non-African ancestry. In other words, a “pure-blooded African”. The term “negro” also means black but is more often associated with belonging to the “black race” regardless of the phenotype.

In America, the single term black is used in two ways. First, it is the term used to define all people who are of African ancestry, regardless the phenotype. The other way is a description of color similar to how Brazilians use the term “preto”; a very dark-skinned black person. In other words, the difference between actors Wesley Snipes and Denzel Washington is this: they are both black in the racial sense, but Snipes would also be categorized as BLACK in color. The difference is thus in intonation; black and BLACK.

In both countries, beauty also defines how a person of African descent is seen. In Brazil, a person of visible African ancestry who is considered physically attractive may be classified as “mulatto” or “moreno”. In Brazil, terms like “mulatto” or “moreno” are sometimes used as intermediary terms between black and white, while in the US, “mixed”, or “mixed race”, is only used when a person is the offspring of an immediate interracial relationship. In other words, under the US system, people like entertainers Beyonce or Jada Pinkett Smith are considered black while Halle Berry and Alicia Keys are considered “mixed”. The difference here is that Berry and Keys both have one white parent while both the parents of both Beyonce and Pinkett-Smith are considered black. On the Brazilian side, Taís Araújo, Preta Gil, Camila Pitanga and Ildi Silva are all women of various degrees of “racial” admixture but all consider themselves black women.

In the past few decades, the systems of racial classification in the two countries seem to be going in opposite directions. While in Brazil, more people of mixed ancestry are choosing to define themselves as black, in the US, “mixed race” people fought for the right to define themselves as such and to check more than one box on US Census forms.

So which system is better?

I would say both and neither, for both systems are simply the contradictory flip side of a category that is fallacious to begin with!

Recently I read a chapter in a book that featured essays written by the late Afro-Brazilian militant, Beatriz Nascimento. In the essay, “Our Racial Democracy”, Nascimento wrote of a conversation she had with a black woman in the city of Salvador, Bahia. The woman pointed to her two children, both of “mixed ancestry”, and said, “This one came out almost like me” (referring to the darker child), “but this one came out better, almost blond.” The woman continued, “This way, blacks will disappear and we won’t have the racial conflict like there is in the United States.” In this woman’s opinion, Brazil and Bahia specifically, were examples of a racial democracy. Her reason for believing that a racial democracy exists is the exact reason that I argue that it doesn’t exist: many Afro-Brazilians are indoctrinated to believe that whiteness and being white are better than being black. Because of this, many believe Brazilian society to be free of racial conflict. In comparison to the United States, where there is a history of racial conflict, Brazil truly appears to be a racial democracy. Many intellectuals argue that Brazil doesn’t have racial problems and always portray the country in a positive light in comparison to the United States. What these intellectuals don’t talk about is the fact that the belief in the racial democracy is based on the fact that many Afro-Brazilians in fact accept a submissive, inferior position in Brazilian society. Many desire and will actually admit the desire to have children with lighter skin and more European features until eventually their descendents look European.

This indoctrination which values whiteness is not restricted to only Brazil but also in many countries that have populations composed of African descendents. I will never forget when I was six years old, the mother of one of my male cousins was pregnant. When someone asked what type of sister he wanted, my cousin exclaimed, “I want a white baby with blue eyes!” I also remember a few years ago when members of my family were describing how they felt when their children were born. One of my female cousins remembered how much pride she felt when she saw her first daughter for the first time. She was beautiful and had light skin. Her second daughter was very dark-skinned. With all of her children in the room, my cousin said that she couldn’t believe how black and ugly her second child appeared. She continued, “I couldn’t believe this black and ugly thing came out of me. She looked like a monkey!” Her comments were deplorable. It was a very humiliating experience for her daughter who was devastated. Her daughter, ten years at the time, later told me that she wanted to cry when she heard her mother describe her in that way. Here lies the contradiction about African-Americans: we claim to have so much pride about being black but we also hate being perceived as “too black” or having features that are perceived as being “too African”. Our own obsession with the European standard of beauty is expressed best by the legendary Malcolm X when he said, “The worst crime the white man has committed has been to teach us to hate ourselves.”